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I assume this situation arises from the "balkanized" Brazilian party system, with the over 9000 tiny parties and their jumble of alliances.
> But is Brussels truly an actor of its own, or indirectly an expression of the most powerful member states' interests?
There is a part of the speech where he criticizes Brussels, but he does not talk about such thing. He says at one point (referring to a corruption case in Brussels), that not Brussels should oversee the member states, but the member states should oversee Brussels. And he hopes that after the next line of elections in the member states will change this for the better (better results for conservatives, "eu-skeptics", anti-centralization parties).
Basically in their (Fidesz and Orbán) rhetoric - when communicating towards the population - they created Brussels as an abstract antagonist they can fight against in the name of the nation and national interests. They also mention it frequently that Soros and his agenda influences them, from overseas.
It's not easy to tell what they really think, because the politicians just use vague terms and tropes. There are political scientists, analysts, and journalists close to Fidesz, who manufacture the rest of the narrative, but I don't really follow them and only pick up bits and pieces from what they say.
I could try to look into the state of the EU parliament and the rest of the institutions, the Commission and whatever they have, how detached it is from the will of the nations, how much influence lobbyists have, who could be these, etc. It could be interesting, potentially enlightening but sounds like a lot of work, and ofc will reflect my own thoughts and bias (probably this goes without saying).
I know participation in EU legislative elections are low here, and I bet in most countries, so the popular support of those who get there is kinda weak, and then in the selection of the rest of the offices, the people of the member states has no say.
Problem is with modern, representative democracies in general, that we don't really send our representatives into the parliament with a package containing what we expect to do there, what they should initiate, what they should support, what is our will, and have little influence on what happens there, we can't really recall the delegated members of the legislature if we aren't satisfied with their work. It's even more true with the EU parliament. We just get some news sporadically what they are voting about. I know the results of their work is published, there are dl-able pdf-s with the laws and votes, and who voted what, etc. it is available online for everyone, but barely anyone has this in mind, and even less check these. People barely aware what's going in in their own countries and localities, we mostly know about what the media screams into the ether.
Oh wow, it's getting too long. We'll see, I wanted to write about something else, politics related, maybe I should finish that up first.